Pink pineapples will be on sale soon — just in time for summer.
For months, even years, pink pineapples have been the subject of rumors and photoshops spread far and wide across the internet, but with summer imminent, it feels especially necessary to remind you of their existence. Not least because they are finally, truly, real and ready to be sold in stores.
In addition to being a delightful shade of rosé, the fruit is also sweeter than your typical pineapple on account of the lycopene that gives them their color. (Lycopene is the pigment that makes tomatoes red and watermelon pink, so it’s totally safe and even sweet to consume.)
The Ananas comosus, as the new breed of pineapple is formally known, will have a pale pink flesh and your standard pineapple exterior. Stores will label them “extra sweet pink flesh pineapple” lest you go in search of the classic yellow/orange and arrive home only to slice open your pineapple and discover it’s pink. (The horror.)
Like approximately 70 percent of all newsworthy food developments, the pink pineapple has everyone all excited about the Instagram and Instagram-adjacent possibilities. Cocktails that can be garnished with pink pineapples, fruit salads that have been sorely craving the shade, and so on. Pink pineapples that can be matched to both pineapple-accented things (swimsuits, glassware, hand bags) and pink things — rosé all day, as they say.
Various outlets are remarking that the pink pineapple is a perfectly 2017 thing — totally in line with the trends of today — which feels objectively true. And yet, they’ve been in development for nearly 12 years.
Pink pineapples are, of course, genetically modified and as such, Del Monte has a patent of their development. Del Monte began work on the fruit in 2005, but received approval from the Food and Drug Administration only in December 2016. Pink pineapples are grown in Costa Rica, if you care to visit and see them in the “wild.”